Renowned environmentalist Saalumarada Thimmakka passed away on Friday at the age of 114. Family sources said the Padma Shri awardee had been ailing for some time and was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Bengaluru, where she breathed her last.

Born on June 30, 1911, in Gubbi taluk of Tumakuru district, Thimmakka rose to national prominence for her decades-long commitment to greening rural Karnataka.

She earned the name “Saalumarada”, meaning ‘row of trees’, after planting 385 banyan trees along a 4.5 km stretch between Hulikal and Kudur in Ramanagara district, part of Bengaluru South.

With no formal education and childless, Thimmakka began planting saplings as a way to fill a personal void, nurturing them as her own children. Her work eventually became a benchmark in grassro

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